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Well, for me VII was the only part of the marathon that was a real slog. VIII and IX had mechanics that made them far more interesting and rewarding, in the end. Idk, I think it's the lack of Hiroyuki Itou's involvement in VII because you can really see how unbalanced materia is.

What mechanics made IX interesting? And VIII was hardly any more balanced from what I've played, and I certainly don't find drawing magic to be rewarding.

I didn't even draw that much magic - there are so many refining skills that you basically don't need to draw anything. Ace your SeeD exams, buy stuff, and get full 100s of spells with no need for grinding. Sure, it's not balanced. But way more fun and varied than FFVII's "just collect 50 million AP to master this materia) thing.

With FFIX, it was the AP management that made it interesting. I loved that even if you managed to learn every skill off the weapons you still had to decide which abilities to pick for the circumstances at hand. Again, a similar concept to materia, but I think it was just executed much better. Not to mention you could use a skill immediately after equipping a weapon, making the decision whether to pick a weapon for stats or abilities even more interesting.

Really, all this made VIII and IX more fun than VII for me this time around

I didn't even draw that much magic - there are so many refining skills that you basically don't need to draw anything. Ace your SeeD exams, buy stuff, and get full 100s of spells with no need for grinding. Sure, it's not balanced. But way more fun and varied than FFVII's "just collect 50 million AP to master this materia) thing.

With FFIX, it was the AP management that made it interesting. I loved that even if you managed to learn every skill off the weapons you still had to decide which abilities to pick for the circumstances at hand. Again, a similar concept to materia, but I think it was just executed much better. Not to mention you could use a skill immediately after equipping a weapon, making the decision whether to pick a weapon for stats or abilities even more interesting.

Really, all this made VIII and IX more fun than VII for me this time around

I never bothered with grinding AP in VII since the game was already incredibly easy without it. But I'd still choose that over SeeD exams. I play games to get away from that stuff. Also I didn't like your abilities being tied to your equipment in IX, but I guess that's just personal taste.